ABSTRACT
Cinema, particularly Hindi cinema has been a predominant mode of cultural (re)production and mass consumption in the Indian subcontinent. In this influential industry, caste often informs culture while the latter, in turn, reinforces the former. Put differently, it constantly reproduces the culture of privileged castes and thereby portrays certain traits of caste as normative culture. While the question of caste remains ‘blacked out’ in Hindi cinema, it is far from a ‘caste-neutral’ space. When caste as a thematic concern crops up occasionally, it occurs almost invariably in the context of ‘untouchables’, varyingly filtered through the Brahminical lens of pity, patronisation, the passive/wretched victim, and the self-appointed paternal/reformed ‘upper-caste’ crusader/saviour. My chapter is an attempt to critically read Lagaan (2001) in this context. Although the film is about the successful fight against unjust British colonial tax system, a close reading of the ‘untouchable’ character Kachra in terms of his body language, his labour, and remuneration reveals that the ‘taxes’ extracted from him for the accident of birth under the regime of caste continue unabated in (and beyond) this much celebrated Bollywood film.
